1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to a display shelving system. More specifically, the invention relates to a wire-rack display having shelves that are easily moved into a display position and a loading position. The display position inclines individual product shelves or trays so that the product is gravity fed to the front of each shelf while the loading position places the shelves on a horizontal orientation.
2. Description of Related Art
Retail display shelving commonly used in grocery stores, department stores, discount stores, and other retail outlets that display items on shelves, are manufactured by numerous companies in a plethora of models and design choices. The units that are typically found in a grocery store to display items for sale, such as bags of salty snacks, are typically self-contained with multiple shelves.
Although there are variations amongst the units offered by different manufacturing companies, the basic design is fairly well established, and there are many common features shared industry wide. In the prior art, a common display apparatus is a gondola-type unit, which typically has a back panel vertically oriented and held in position by connection to at least one upright, which is also vertically oriented. The connection to the upright is accomplished by at least a bottom rail, a center rail, and a top rail, although more horizontal rails can be used for this purpose. The vertical uprights are stabilized by at least one, and typically two, base legs or brackets. One or more shelves can be horizontally positioned in numerous locations relative to the back panel by virtue of connections between the shelf and the uprights. A base deck or shelf is maintained off of the surface upon which the entire unit sits by being supported by the base brackets. A closed base front encloses the space beneath the base deck in conjunction with the base deck and base bracket trim, when said base and trim also covers the base brackets. The gondola unit may have other trim components, such as the upright and trim, which cover the upright. A disadvantage of such a gondola system is that the shelves cannot be moved to different positions or different orientations while carrying product. Thus, every time a shelf is to be moved, all product must be unloaded, the shelf must be moved, and the product must be restocked. A similar problem is shared with many prior art wire-rack display systems. It would be desirable to have a single unit with shelves that could be easily adjusted to more than one orientation without disassembly or product removal.
When using gravity-feed displays having multiple shelves per column, it can be quite difficult to restock product onto the inclined or sloped shelving. As product is placed onto a gravity-fed shelf, the product tends to slide down to the lower, front side of the shelf Furthermore, with each subsequent placement of product, the re-stocker must either push the already-placed product upwards and back towards the rear of the shelf in order to make room for the next product or the re-stocker must reach beyond the furthest product piece toward the rear and up between the current shelf and the shelf above (if any), which is often out of the re-stocker's line of sight. It is much easier to restock lines of product onto horizontal, non-gravity-fed shelves than it is to restock inclined, gravity-fed shelves. It would therefore be desirable for a single display rack to have a horizontal loading orientation and a gravity-fed displaying orientation.
Nothing in the prior art addresses the problem associated with changing shelf orientation without disassembly or product removal. Furthermore, a need exists for a display system capable of, and easily alternated between, a gravitational-feed orientation and a non-gravitational-feed orientation. The present invention fills these needs and other needs as detailed more fully below.